Frozen Yogurt Trail Mix Bars

A couple months ago I found this recipe on Lindsay’s blog, The Lean Green Bean. It’s taken me awhile to make it, but I did, and it was pretty good, so I thought I’d share it.

It’s really fast and easy to make. It took me under 10 minutes to have everything mixed together and in the freezer.

You can use whatever berries you like. I had a bag of frozen strawberries and a bag of mixed berries in the freezer, so I put a little of both in. Next time I think I’ll just go with the strawberries – they’re definitely my favourite.

For all the details, click here for the recipe. I think these would be a great snack on a hot summer day – perfect for cooling off.

Banana Bread

Like I mentioned awhile ago, I made banana bread, and I thought it was about time I shared it with you.

Combine the wet ingredients.

Combine the dry ingredients.

Mashed banana. Mix together the wet and dry ingredients with the banana.

Add coconut and walnuts to the mixture. Pour into loaf pans and bake.

Fresh out of the oven.

Cooled and ready to eat.

I used the banana bread recipe from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook, but you can find a very similar recipe here.

What’s the last thing you baked?

Pasta Casserole

I made this the other night and it turned out great, even if it did take longer to make than the recipe said. It was still definitely worth it.

There was enough for leftovers, and this was one of the things that I was looking forward to eating for lunches. It was just as good the second time around. You can find the recipe here.

What’s the last thing you made that was utterly delicious?

Eatmore Bars

My brother loves Eatmore Bars. When he found a recipe to make them at home, he asked me to make them. I’m a wonderful sister, so I did and I thought I’d share them with you.

There’s not many ingredients – just chocolate chips.

chopped peanuts,

oatmeal, peanut butter, and corn syrup.

Melt the chocolate, peanut butter, and corn syrup together.

Add the oatmeal and peanuts.

Mix together.

Put into a parchment paper lined pan.

Let chill in fridge and then cut into squares.

They’re pretty easy to make. I’ve never tried an Eatmore Bar before, but my brother said these taste just like the original. I tried a piece of the ones I made, and I have to admit that they were pretty good.

For the recipe click here.

What’s your favourite candy bar?

Rum Balls

I didn’t get a chance to post all of the baking that I did for Christmas before Christmas, so I thought I’d write about it even though the holidays are over. You can’t go wrong with delicious things to bake, right?

We got this recipe from friend of my mom’s close to 20 years ago. I made them just about every Christmas. The secret to these are adding more rum than the recipe says to.

Melt together half a cup of butter, half a cup of icing sugar, and 3/4 cups of semi sweet chocolate chips.

I usually do it in the microwave, but it could be done in a double boiler as well.

The chocolate smells so good at this point.

Add two eggs, a pinch of salt, one and a quarter cups of graham crumbs, and three tablespoons of rum. Mix well.

Cover and chill mixture well. I usually leave it in the fridge for a couple hours

Roll into one inch balls.

Coat with chocolate sprinkles.

Store in the fridge or freezer. These always disappear pretty quick in our house so I try to make them as close as possible to Christmas.

What’s your favourite thing to bake?

Gingerbread Cookies

Mixing the dry ingredients together, with almost half a cup of spices.

Mixing the wet ingredients together. The brown sugar gives it the brown color.

After mixing the wet and dry ingredients together it smells amazing.

Wrapping it up to put it in the fridge to chill before rolling it out.

Cutting out the gingerbread men.

Fresh out of the oven.

Cooling, making the house smell so good.

Recipe can be found here, thanks to Martha Stewart.

Cereal Snack Mix

I make this every Christmas. The family loves it, and it’s a nice change from all the sweets.

Ingredients:

1 and a half boxes Crispix cereal

Half a box Cheerios

1 bag pretzels

300 grams mixed nuts

2 sticks unsalted butter

4 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

3 teaspoons seasoning salt

1 teaspoon onion powder

2 teaspoons garlic powder

First off, mix the cereals, pretzels, and nuts in a large mixing bowl. I use the biggest one I have – there’s a lot of cereal!

Mix together the spices – seasoning salt, onion powder, and garlic powder.

Melt the butter in a roasting pan in a 250 degree oven. Once the butter is melted, add the Worcestershire sauce.  Add the spice mixture and mix well so there’s no clumps left. .

Add the cereal mixture to the roasting pan and mix well so the cereal is evenly coated in the butter and spices.

Put it back into the oven for 75 minutes, stirring every fifteen minutes. Once it’s done cooking, cool on wire rack until completely cool. Store in air tight container for up to a week.

Be warned that in our house this stuff disappears fast really fast. I always think I have tonnes of it, but before I know it, it’s disappeared.

Adapted from Chex party mix.

Zucchini Parmesan Crisps

A couple weeks ago on I was browsing on Pinterest and found a recipe for baked zucchini crisps. The photo looked amazing so I clicked on it to find out more. Once I’d read the recipe I decided I had to make them. I had a couple zucchinis from the garden to use, so I thought this would be the perfect recipe to use one in.

I used a mandolin to slice the zucchinis – which would have taken forever by and, plus I can guarantee that they wouldn’t have been as uniformly cut. I’m so glad someone invented mandolins! Once it was all sliced I tossed them in the olive oil.

I put together the panko and parmesan mixture – super simple and easy.

When the recipe says to press the zucchinis into the bread crumbs, they mean press! Once I did a few I got the hang of it, and the rest went pretty quick. Usually I end up running out of breading, but with this recipe there was enough to do the whole zucchini.

I definitely should have cooked them a few more minutes, but they were still delicious! They were in the oven for the higher end of the time suggestion, but I think after a few more minutes they would have been perfect.

Despite being a tiny but undercooked, they were really tasty. The outside was crispy and the inside was tender and moist. I’ll definitely be making these guys again, the only difference is with a slightly longer baking time.

Click here for the recipe over at the Black Jack Bake House.

Pecan Cookies

I ended up making pecan cookies in honour of Pecan Cookie Day that’s coming up on Friday. Cause I need an excuse to make delicious cookies, right?

I got the recipe out of my go to cookie book, Martha Stewart’s Cookies, though there’s a very similar recipe on her website. Click here to check it out.

I chopped up the pecans, which surprisingly it didn’t take as long as I thought it would.

The batter came together pretty easily.

The last step before putting them in the oven was to add a pecan half to the top of each cookie.

They spread a lot – good thing I put a lot lot of room between each one like the recipe said. Sometimes it’s tempting to put them closer together, but it definitely wouldn’t work with this recipe.

They didn’t take too long to cool once I put them on the wire rack because they were such thin cookies.

I thought they turned out really pretty, not to mention tasty. They were definitely a success. The only down side to these is that they’re a pretty fragile cookie, so they wouldn’t be very good taking them somewhere, I think they’d end up breaking. Not that that would make them taste bad though.

Zucchini Recipe Roundup

With the zucchini that I’ve been growing in the garden, I’ve been looking for zucchini recipes. I thought I’d share some of the ones I’ve found on Pinterest.

Parmesan Roasted Zucchini

Baked Zucchini Chips

Zucchini Parmesan Crisps

Parmesan Encrusted Zucchini

Zucchini Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Zucchini Cakes

Enjoy!